Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

Saturday, July 11, 2009

SafeSky and the Peace Patch

1. Remember how in summer camp all the kids wouldpick on some sucker and tell him to go to thedirector and ask him for a left-handed skyhook? Well, meet the cardiology patch and its sister, the peace patch.

The biggest domestic story in Israel in recentdays involves the growing evolving "SafeSky" scandal.

In a sense, the SafeSky story is the Oslo story in miniature.

The scandal hit the headlines when it wasannounced that an esoteric Israeli company haddeveloped a remarkable medical diagnostic, a skinpatch capable of recording body signs and givinga warning of an impending heart attack half anhour before it took place. The company,according to the hype, was being bought up by aforeign biotech multinational at a marketcapitalization valuation of a cool billiondollars. While similar Israeli high-techstartups have been sold for high amounts, thisseemed to be a tech and financial miracle.

Except that very quickly a bad smell startingcoming up. The company was the initiative of athird-rate dentist, best known for having set upa network of dental clinics staffed with cheapimmigrant dentists from eastern Europe. Theinventor of the gadget was a computer techie whoknew nothing about cardiology. The techieinventor had twice done time in prison for scamsand fraud and claimed to have invented the deviceduring one of his episodes of being hosted by thestate. The duo then recruited as CEO a personalbuddy of Bibi Netanyahu, mainly for the mediahype, and also the fellow who is supposed to beoverseeing the negotiations with the savages toget Gilad Shalit released. Neither had actually seen the device work.

Then it turns out that cardiologists are splitbetween those who say that no such patch couldpossibly work and those who say it would be verydifficult to make one that works, and nocardiologist works for the SafeSky company or hasseen the patch. Then the overseas multinationalsupposedly buying out the company for the billionbuckaroos insists it has never heard ofthem. And no one besides the company's dentistand the criminal inventor claim to have seen thegadget work. The only "evidence" that it worksis that the duo hired a Cyprus computer graphicsguy to design a "promo" ad that claims that thegadget works, except the Cypriot has never seen it either.

The press is still trying to figure out what thepair were REALLY up to, and the word on thestreet is that it was all an elaborate scam tolaunder money on behalf of some underworldcharacters. The only money that has come intothe company coffers so far turns out to be fromsome sketchy Africans, possibly the same peoplewho write you spam each morning about being aprince who wants to send you some treasure inexchange for your bank PIN numbers.

Everyone is comparing it with the similarChelm-like scam from almost 30 years ago whereLikud geezer and ex-Irgun fighter Yaakov Meridorannounced he had found a remarkable energybreakthrough that would make petroleum obsoleteand would disprove the theories ofEinstein. That turned out to be about ascredible as the weekly conspiracy spam sent outby UFO-nut Barry Chamish to his few remaining followers.

But what I find remarkable is how the inventorsof the scam had people going so long, just fromrepeating over and over absurd claims, andattacking and threatening to sue anyone who questioned their claims.

The claims of the Oslo architects were just asidiotic and just as big a scam, and Oslo wasmarketed in exactly the same way as SafeSky, atleast until the media started asking the rightquestions. The problem with Oslo is that theIsraeli media, still largely the occupiedterritories of the Left, are still mouthing the"Two State for Two People" mantra about someimaginary peace patch. Like SafeSky, it is all ascam by con men, based on loud repetition of hype.

2. Speaking of near-uniform leftist solidarityin Israel's media, the other amusing story thispast week was the scandal involving Yossi Sarid,erstwhile commissar of far-leftist Meretz, anearly guru of national suicide via Oslo, andcurrently head of a panel that decides to whom toaward the "Sapir Prize," paid for by Israel'sstate lottery agency. The problem was that Saridwanted to grant the prize to a relative of himself.

When word got out, the media went intonear-unanimous indignity, insisting that Sarid issuch a decent honest bloke that any suggestion ofdubious ethical considerations in his nepotismare intolerable abuses of his good name.

Well, almost the whole media. The valiantBen-Dror Yemini from Maariv breaks once againwith Israel's journalistic Kremlin. Sarid,points out Yemini, has a rich track record ofbeing involved in sleaze. In Sarid's earlycareer, he worked as button man for the MAPAIParty (later's renamed the Labor Party) bolshieeconomic commissar Pinhas Sapir. As such, heliterally bribed a newspaperman on behalf ofSapir to squash a story about a scandal involvingMAPAI mayor of Tel Aviv Mordecai Namir, and thenbribed other newspapermen who learned about the first bribe to dummy up.

3. Netanyahu has backed off from most of theeconomic reforms he was touting and at this pointit looks like he will change just aboutnothing. But one area in which he is stilltalking change has to do with privatizing landsowned by the Israel LandsAuthority. Interestingly, much of the Israeli"Right" is up in arms against the idea of privateownership of land, joining some of the worstfar-leftists in Israel in working themselves upinto a fit over the idea. Privately owned landis the bulwark of democracy elsewhere, but onlybolshevik nationalization of land could work in Israel, they seem to believe. While I do not always see eye to eye withMoshe Feiglin, the perpetual gadfly challengingNetanyahu within the Likud in a series ofquixotic efforts, to Moshe's credit he parts withthe Bolshevik Right in this weekend's MakorRishon newspaper and comes out squarely in favor of land privatization.